


who said(you weren't worth saving)

by Riley_Ludicrous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Human Trafficking, Hurt/Comfort, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan-centric, M/M, Prostitution, Recovery, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 05:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18147824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riley_Ludicrous/pseuds/Riley_Ludicrous
Summary: Donghyuck doesn't believe in hope, but he is willing to be the hope of someone else.





	who said(you weren't worth saving)

**Author's Note:**

> Tw for mentions of rape.

Donghyuck has been in the system for a very long time. No one held captive in the system is known outside of the system, so he thinks it’s better that way; otherwise, those who had chosen the system would have had to dispose of his relatives. It’s much better living without memories of better times and of losing them. There are those like Mark who got taken after the age of ten. He still has that ridiculous hope that he could one day and everything would be fine in the after.

Donghyuck thinks that, in this system, people like Mark are fools, but only he can say that to Mark. If anyone else goes there, Donghyuck finds a way to hurt them.

Donghyuck has a little group of six other boys that he’s taken responsibility of. He’s given up meals, taken beatings, stayed up through precious nights for them, and although he is solidly in the middles age-wise, he knows that he is the veteran of this system and therefore, must take care of them. In return, they are the reason he still remembers his name as Donghyuck and not Haechan.

Donghyuck doesn’t believe in hope, but he is willing to be the hope of someone else.  
.  
.  
.  
He takes their clients whenever he can and a lot of times when he can’t. Men will fuck him while he’s bleeding and hot with fever if it means he can save Chenle or Jisung or any of them. He never thinks he’s as sick as they are. They don’t know quite the extent of his care for them, but they don’t have to.

Truly, he would die for them, and more necessarily, he lives for them. For all his efforts they somehow end up saved, and the six of them are well enough in body and mind to answer questions while he sits in a hospital bed drugged to the point that he feels wonderfully num for the first time in a long time. Doctors and nurses bustle around him, but he can barely hear them. He hopes—

—that no one overwhelms his boys.  
.  
.  
.  
He wakes up surrounded them once, smiles, and falls immediately back to sleep.  
.  
.  
.  
He wakes up again, and they are still all there, he counts, but there’s an additional face that he focuses on warily. If their hope-logic is situationally applicable, anyone involved in their rescue must be selfless and want nothing in return. If his logic is applicable, he vows that he will offer what he doesn’t want to. He can continue to be their hope in this new, big world.

Mark explains that this man is actually old friend of his. Donghyuck doesn’t fully know what friendship means in this world, but this must be something else going by the way Mark stares a second too long at the man, Yukhei, and how Yukhei responds by gently squeezing Mark’s arm.

Donghyuck doesn’t know hope. He believes in it, though.  
.  
.  
.  
Someone else comes to visit him. His name is Ten, “Like the number,” he says. He giggles as he introduces himself. “Like my name was Haechan?” Donghyuck wonders out loud. 

The reason why he could take his friend’s clients was because he smiled even while he was getting fucked bloody, which was nearly every time, actually. 

“Yes,” Ten confirms somberly, “like your name was Haechan. Your friends say you were a bit of a leader to them,” Ten continues. “Is that why you’re still here?”

Do they not know? Ten asks silently. Ten was someone’s hope in that certain way, Donghyuck thinks.

“They wanted to put all of you in the foster care system, since you all seem to be under eighteen,” Ten tells him, “but Yukhei offered his place to Mark, and Johnny and I think we have room for the rest of you, if you’ll stay with us.”

Ten can be Donghyuck’s hope, and Johnny, too, if what Ten says about him is true.  
.  
.  
.  
Donghyuck’s room is a little small, Ten tells him apologetically as they walk in, but it’s the biggest room Donghyuck ever remembers having, and he doesn’t have to share it with anyone. He doesn’t want to bother the others with his nightmares that are just beginning to haunt him. 

It doesn’t make a difference, he discovers that night. Chenle and Jisung come and snuggle with him to fend off their own nightmares first, and then Renjun, and then Jeno and Jaemin together. Jeno and Jaemin share a room, but group cuddles are much nicer with the whole group. Optimally, they would have Mark with them, but the others trust Yukhei enough that they aren’t worried, and Donghyuck isn’t outright suspicious of him.

Ten screeches the next morning when he finds one of their rooms empty, but when he finds them all in Donghyuck’s room, he breathes a sigh of relief and tells them that Johnny’s making pancakes for breakfast. Johnny puts two pancakes on each of their plates insistently, and he tells them that they can have more if they want. None of them take seconds, but the gesture is appreciated. Neither Ten nor Johnny seems surprised.  
.  
.  
.  
Mark and Yukhei start dating. This surprises none of them, but Donghyuck still asks for a ride to the station and finds Yukhei in his office. “If you hurt him,” Donghyuck warns, “I won’t kill you. That would be too merciful of me.”

Yukhei nods solemnly in response, and doesn’t question Donghyuck. 

Jaemin and Jeno start dating as well, and Donghyuck isn’t worried. If they hurt each other, they’ll punish themselves for it, he knows.

Chenle and Jisung dating freaks Donghyuck only a little, but they’ve seen the worst parts of the world, so he thinks they’re old enough to make this decision.

Renjun sits with him while Jisung and Chenle tell them, and when they leave, he turns to Donghyuck and asks, “Does that mean we should, too?”

“Do you know what they’ve done to me?” Donghyuck pointedly asks. If any of them know, it’s probably Renjun, he realizes. For all that they went through the same system, Renjun is the only one out of his six that had so little hope. He was like Donghyuck, except he tried to fight back for longer. 

“We all figured it out when you were in the hospital for so long.” 

“And do you know what it means?”

“I think I have an idea,” Renjun says quietly. 

“We can try.”

**Author's Note:**

> Remember when I was like, "Angst? Me? Noooo" and then I wrote this fic. Huh.   
> The ending is kinda open for interpretation, so enjoy that.  
> Thanks for reading! Remember to leave Kudos and comments, and if you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know! I've been suffering a bit of writer's block lately.


End file.
